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Dessert

Baked Bananas

A baked banana dessert with a sweet orange‑cornstarch sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Baked Bananas

Why it works: Banana and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,118 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Baked Bananas

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the bananas

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Strip off half the banana skin and remove the threads.

  3. Replace the bananas in their skins and sprinkle 2 teaspoons of sugar on top of each.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, melt 1 tablespoon of butter and mix it with ½ cup of sugar.

  2. Dissolve 1 teaspoon of corn starch in the juice of 3 oranges.

  3. Combine the butter mixture, corn starch mixture, and juice from the bananas, then cook until thickened.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 20 minutes and serve hot.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Banana + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,118 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Corn + orangetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together586 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Banana + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Banana + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Bananas
Provide the main body of the dish, softening into a tender, sweet filling as they bake.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the banana surface caramelize and brown in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce, giving it a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Corn starch
Thickens the sauce as it cooks, giving it body instead of a thin liquid.
Orange juice
Adds acidity and citrus aroma to the sauce, balancing its sweetness.

The step that matters

Cook the sauce until thickened. Corn starch only thickens once the liquid reaches a simmer and is stirred, so cooking it fully is needed for a smooth, glossy sauce rather than a thin, starchy one.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (banana, sugar, butter, corn):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, sugar, butter, corn. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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